Situational Exercises – Imagination

Situational Exercises – Imagination

Imagine a situation where you are given the part of a secondary character who robs a convenience store.

Among the first things to bear in mind is that no part however small should be considered insignificant. Being insignificant applies only to mediocre actors. Let us now get down to the essentials. By asking yourself some questions, you should be able to rationalize your character’s behavior.

What is the reason for having chosen the store and hour of the day that you have?

What are the circumstances that have forced you to attempt robbing the store? Remember, if you are carrying out the robbery to pay your rent you might act in a different manner than if you were carrying out the robbery to facilitate your leaving town

What will you do after you have committed the robbery? Where will you go and what are you planning to do with the money?

Exercise

Imagine yourself to be in the situation of the secondary character. Ask yourself all those questions and with some improvisation enact the scene.

You can also experiment playing the role of a reporter. How will you prepare yourself for this role? A good idea will be to check with someone who is a reporter. Try to watch them if you can, in action, whether conducting an interview in a studio or reporting from a location. Based on that, you can get some idea of the kind of questions that reporters ask. This will help you to better understand all the actions and further develop your character. Then think of a different situation and use the all the inputs you have gathered as guidelines to construct a scene.

Exercise

Play the role of the reporter and construct different situations to enact.

A vivid imagination also helps when you have to go beyond the obvious. Very often, the character’s lines have potential for greater meaning which is not tapped. For example, your character has to say, “I am Hungry now.” How will you understand this statement? Has watching a commercial made you feel hungry? Or are you hungry at this current moment and upset that you are unable to eat?

There are those times, when it is possible to determine the subtext of the script through the actions of a whole scene. Remember that the subtext refers to the whole meaning, the thought, the intention, and the bodily gestures associated with script. They are equally important and should be studied carefully.

Michael Chekov, a Russian American actor once said that actors imagine with their bodies and when making gestures or moving they are in effect responding to their own internal images. This responding to internal images can only happen when the process of creating such internal images is shaped into a consciously applied technique. This non-vocal body is capable of expressing without the need for a script.